Famous Last Words: Emily Kay

When I was younger I looked up to Nicole Cooke. I bought all the jerseys from the teams she was racing in and got signed autographs and everything. When I started cycling there weren’t that many women that were at her level.

I’m a bit of a trainer collector. I like to go out and look for trainers that nobody has. I think I have around 25 pairs at the moment. I wear trainers all the time.

Whenever it’s someone’s birthday it’s an excuse to bake some sort of cake. When I come home after a long road ride I don’t really want to go out, so baking is something that I get quite a lot of enjoyment out of it.

I’m not just into normal cakes, I’m quite into trying different things like banana cake or strawberry and cream cake. I do them for all my friends’ birthdays so they get to taste all my experiments. Obviously I don’t eat them!

I started riding when I was five. I saw a rider in pink kit in one of my dad’s cycling magazines. When I was five I wanted to ride and race in pink kit too, so I started cycling.

If I won £1 million I think firstly I would buy some more trainers. And then I think I’d build a velodrome in Birmingham, or at least try to. Birmingham is such a big area but there is no indoor velodrome. I don’t think I’d get many other pairs of trainers once I’d built that.

My favourite trainers are a limited edition pair of Nike trainers, from Liberty in London. They’re bright pink and they’ve got a design with orange and green – it sounds quite disgusting when I say it like that! I don’t take them out of the cupboard very often.

I’d like to be Beyonce. She’s got an amazing voice, but she is also quite a strong woman and I think that is a good image to have. She definitely stands up for her own interests.

I don’t think I ever wanted to do anything apart from cycling. Once I might have wanted to be a psychologist or a psychiatric nurse, but since I was five it’s always been about being a professional cyclist. I’ve never really had time to think about another job.

I did part of the John o’ Groats to Land’s End with my family when I was nine. I cycled 120 miles in one day. Then my mum’s bike snapped in half when we got to Blackburn. So that was the end of that. We got the train home.

I’d quite like to be a lion. I think I’m most like a lion; in our [ODP] team I’m quite a good leader and I’m also quite fierce when I believe in something. You wouldn’t want to be against me in a fight!This article was first published in the October 3 issue of Cycling Weekly. Read Cycling Weekly magazine on the day of release where ever you are in the world International digital edition, UK digital edition. And if you like us, rate us!a